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Justice. Only Justice Shall Thou Pursue

Thursday, April 22, 2010

Comedy Central Caves To Islamists Over South Park Portrayal of Mohammad

Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of South Park, predicted that this would happen and they went for it anyways. They were going to lampoon the Islamists and their repeated threats against those who would depict Mohammad in any fashion.

That's exactly what happened. The Islamists did make threats against Comedy Central and the South Park duo.

Recently RevolutionMuslim.com, a website known for supporting jihad against the West, published a warning to Matt Stone and Trey Parker--the creators of "South Park." The post said that they could end up like Theo Van Gogh, a Dutch filmmaker who was shot and stabbed to death by an extremist, for depicting Muhammad on their show. During last week's episode, the prophet appeared in a bear suit, prompting Abu Talhah Al-Amrikee to say the men "outright insulted" the religious leader. The post included a gruesome picture of Van Gogh as well as the addresses of Comedy Central's New York office and Parker and Stone's California production office.

This week Muhammad was set to appear again, but was replaced by Santa Claus in a bear suit and the word "CENSORED" was plastered over parts of the episode. Every mention of Muhammad was bleeped out. It's not immediately clear whether this was intended to protect the show's creators or if it was executed by them to mock the hoopla, but what is clear is this is not the first time.

Yet there are some who think that Stone and Parker went too far. I'm sorry, but what about freedom of speech and of criticism of the jihadis who threaten violence at every opportunity? The Islamists threaten those who pose any criticism of Islam and the depiction of Mohammad. In fact, Stone and Parker knew that this would be the outcome when they created the episode. It practically wrote itself based on the past reactions by Islamists around the world to cartoons depicting the violent tendencies of Islamists around the world to blow stuff up and to murder people who do not take kindly to the Islamists and their intention to spread Islam by the sword.

Religion is ripe for lampooning and spoofing. South Park does this regularly. Islam should not be exempt from such criticism, particularly when the criticism is so richly deserving. The fact is that the Islamists who threaten South Park's creators are proving Stone and Parker correct. They knew that this was going to be the outcome - that the Islamists would resort to threats of violence to get their displeasure across because that's what they have repeatedly done in the past.